The Tao

Performance Photography

…this is my method. I have very good canon gear a 5D, 70-200 f2.8 and 24-70 f2.8. Always get the best you can right from the start. I always shoot in raw format. The reason being I have more control over the shot and much more information within the shot. I process everything through lightroom.

Normally you get 3 songs to shoot the artist. The first song I take hardly any shots I just watch the performer, how they move etc. I also watch the lighting as it changes rapidly. The Lighting like the music and the performer has a timing to it and I will count how long between lights waiting for a favorable light. Everything has a stillpoint, movement to rest is always happening and I will wait for the performer to come to rest with eyes open and no mic in front of them. I focus on the eyes.

The gear I use allows me to shoot at a high ISO usally between 1000-1600 ISO my fstop never changes it is alway f2.8. I shoot in M mode and as my fstop never changes I only have to adjust my timing which I am constantly doing to match the performer and the lights. I take no notice of exposure after I have looked at my first few shots.

The biggest thing I learnt at my first concert was from an old film photographer. While all the digital guys were shooting at random at anything hoping they were going toget something this old guy would just wait and take the odd one, his work is fantastic with no wasted shots.

I would say nearly every photographer in the pit shoots in AV mode, jpeg and rattles off as many as they can, you can hear the cameras shooting 10 shots a second. This is not photography, it is not based on awareness, relationship to the subject, or thinking clearly about what you want etc. I try and take less shots each time I do a concert. I think photography is all about what Minor White said

A very receptive state of mind… not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives a life in it.

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.

I’m always mentally photographing everything as practice.

No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.

Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts.

Meditation

The source of all ‘this’ is all ‘this’. Often we look for the spiritual world with closed eyes but maybe the everyday world when seen with clear open eyes is the Spirit. A lot of meditation can become an avoidance of ‘what is’ a turning inward without the opening outward. We need both active and passive meditation. The ability to ponder and enquire quietly within, uncovering and understanding the ways of our pysche with acceptance. The result of that understanding expressing itself outwardly in relationship within the world. The Universe is a participatory affair.

I good place to start enquiring is the body. Is the edge of the body open or closed? Where does the body stop? Are there any closed edges to the body at all? Or is the body an open dynamic constantly in relationship with its surroundings? 
Breathe in via the skin as though the skin is like a piece of fine silk, drawing the breath in with the bones, breathing out relax the skin and extend beyond the body into openness, let the body flower. Maybe the whole Universe is Open, no closed edges anywhere. It is only our concepts that create edges around ‘objects’. What would the mind be without its content? What would an object be if you didn’t define it? Find another way of knowing without using thought.

Meditation  is giving attention to the present moment with non-judgemental feeling awareness, an open enquiry into ‘what is’. It is not about attaining anything, changing something or looking for a higher experience it is coming back to were we are NOW and throwing the light of awareness with feeling on to it, a merging of the senses with the present. These are some ways to cultivate and to enquire into ‘what is’.

Sitting or standing still…..Bring yourself present with all the sounds you can hear without naming the sound, aware of the sounds coming and going within space. It is as though the whole body can hear and feel the sounds as they appear and disappear. Next bring yourself present with the body where it is being touched by your clothes, the ground, the floor, the chair, even the space. Cultivate a feeling awareness at the edge of the body, sensitive to touch. Then bring yourself present with the breath. Listen to the breath until you can hear it falling into the body and falling out of the body. Keep listening for the breath even if you can’t hear it; cultivate the listening. Hear where the breath starts and finishes, invite space forward into your experience. Go deeper you are not in the moment but you are the moment. Everything is open, an edgeless universe.

When the mind drifts bring it back to the present by naming what you are doing: thinking, walking, sitting etc. Then feel your present experience without defining it.

Exercises in Looking :-Vision

Look without naming or defining.   Look inward before looking out.
Let all edges and surfaces seen be open to space.   Look into the looking at point zero.

With a soft gaze let awareness not stop but pass through what you see.
Let the background space be awareness.   
Look at appearance without turning it into objects.
Look with an active not-knowing
Appreciate and feel knowingness in all appearance.
Look and see the relationship of everything.
Look at space instead of the content, notice that space is not moving.

These are essential questions not to be answered but allow them to produce a deeper knowingness.

Where does a thought go after it goes?
What is everything appearing in?
If the moment is a gift, how do you receive it?
How big are you if you don’t define yourself by the size of your body?
At what point do the senses merge with the sense object, where do they meet.
Where does the future come from?
How long is 5 mins?
At what point does change take place?
When does this moment slip into the past or roll into the future?

Walk as though you are headless, and where the head was there is only open space.

Walk with your head suspened from the sky, release the muscles from the bones, relax and gaze from your belly center. Breathe in and out through your feet, bring space into your experience.

Center the body open the mind to space.

Consciousness projects itself into itself…it is the source and the resting place of everything.

Emptiness to Emptiness to Emptiness.

Question everything, create no spiritual authority find out for yourself. Be in your power and never explain yourself to anyone unless you want to. Ask for what you want and have the wisdom to know you may not get it, but at least ask. Instead of being in the moment be the moment……..take care and enjoy good company.                                                                                                                                     

“One should devote one’s existence to That in Which one is arising-the
Very Condition That Is Free, Happy, Blissful, Divine. That Condition Is
So. It Is the Reality and the Truth-even presently, even while one is
enduring an apparently limited form of existence. If it becomes plain
that this is so, then what other purpose for one’s life could one
intelligently select?”